Books: Jan of the Windmill

J >> Juliana Horatia Ewing >> Jan of the Windmill

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But the sound of that song and the meeting with Mr. Ford's client
determined him to wait no longer, but to make a desperate effort for
freedom then and there. The Cheap Jack was collecting the pence,
and Jan had made a few bold black strokes as a beginning of a new
sketch, when he ran up to the Cheap Jack and whispered, "Get me a
ha'perth of whitening, father, as fast as you can. There's an oil-
shop yonder."

"All right, Jan," said the hunchback. "Keep 'em together, my dear,
meanwhile. We're doing prime, and you shall have a sausage for
supper."

As the Cheap Jack waddled away for the whitening, Jan said to the
lockers-on, "Keep your places, ladies and gentlemen, till I return,
and keep your eyes on the drawing, which is the last of the series,"
and ran off down a narrow street, at right angles to the oil-shop.

The crowd waited patiently for some moments. Then the Cheap Jack
hurried back with the whitening. But Jan returned no more.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE BAKER.--ON AND ON.--THE CHURCH BELL.--A DIGRESSION.--A FAMILIAR
HYMN.--THE BOYS' HOME.

Jan stopped at last from lack of breath to go on. His feet had been
winged by terror, and he looked back even now with fear to see the
Cheap Jack's misshapen figure in pursuit. He had had no food for
hours, but the pence the dark gentleman had given him were in his
chalk pouch, and he turned into the first baker's shop he came to to
buy a penny loaf. It was a small shop, served by a pleasant-faced
man, who went up and down, humming, whistling, and singing, -

"Like tiny pipe of wheaten straw,
The wren his little note doth swell,
And every living thing that flies" -

"A penny loaf, please," said Jan, laying down the money, and the man
turned and said, "Why, you be the boy that draws on the pavement!"

For a moment Jan was silent. It presented itself to him as a new
difficulty, that he was likely to be recognized. There was a flour
barrel by the counter, and as he pondered he began mechanically to
sift the flour through his finger and thumb.

"You be used to flour seemingly," said the baker, smiling. "Was 'ee
ever in a mill? 'ee seems to have a miller's thumb."

In a few minutes Jan had told his story, and had learned, with
amazement and delight, that the baker had not only been a
windmiller's man, but had worked in Master Lake's tower mill. He
was, in fact, the man who had helped George the very night that Jan
arrived. But he confirmed the fact that it was Sal who brought Jan,
by his account of her, and he seemed to think that she was probably
his mother. He was very kind. He refused to take payment for the
loaf, and went, humming, whistling, and singing, away to get Jan
some bacon to eat with it.

When he was alone, Jan's hand went back to the flour, and he sifted
and thought. The baker was kind, but he had said that "it was an
ackerd thing for a boy to quarrel with's parents." Jan felt that he
expected him to go home. Perhaps at this moment the baker had gone,
with the best intentions, to fetch the Cheap Jack, and bring about a
family reunion. Terror had become an abiding state of Jan's mind,
and it seized him afresh, like a palsy. He left the penny on the
counter, and shook the flour-dust from his fingers, and, stealing
with side glances of dread into the street, he sped away once more.

He had no knowledge of localities. He ran "on and on," as people do
in fairy tales. Sometimes he rested on a doorstep, sometimes he hid
in a shutter box or under an archway. He had learned to avoid the
police, and he moved quickly from one dark corner to another with a
hunted look in his black eyes. Late in the night he found a heap of
straw near a warehouse, on which he lay down and fell asleep. At
eight o'clock the next morning he was awakened by the clanging of a
bell, and he jumped up in time to avoid a porter who was coming to
the warehouse, and ran "on and on."

It was a bright morning, and the sun was shining; but Jan's feet
were sore, and his bones ached from cold and weariness. Yesterday
the struggle to escape the Cheap Jack had kept him up, but now he
could only feel his utter loneliness and misery. There was not a
friendly sound in all the noises of the great city,--the street
cries of food he could not buy, the quarrelling, the laughter with
which he had no concern, the tramp of strange feet, the roar of
traffic and prosperity in which he had no part.

He was so lonely, so desolate, that when a sound came to him which
was familiar and pleasant, and full of old and good and happy
associations, it seemed to bring his sad life to a climax, to give
just one strain too much to his powers of endurance. Like the white
lights he put to his black sketches, it seemed to bring the darkness
of his life into relief, and he felt as if he could bear no more,
and would like to sit down and die. The sound came through the
porch of a church. It was the singing of a hymn,--one of Charles
Wesley's hymns, of which Master Swift was so fond.

The sooty iron gates were open, and so was the door. Jan crept in
to peep, and he caught sight of a stained window full of pale faces,
which seemed to beckon him, and he went into the church and no one
molested him.

There is a very popular bit of what I venture to think a partly
false philosophy which comes up again and again in magazines and
story books in the shape of satirical contrasts between the words of
the General Confession, or the Litany, and the particular materials
in which the worshippers, the intercessors, and the confessing
sinners happen to be clothed. But, since broadcloth has never yet
been made stout enough to keep temptation from the soul, and silk
has proved no protection against sorrow, I confess that I never
could see any thing more incongruous in the confessions and
petitions of handsomely dressed people than of ragged ones. That
any sinner can be "miserable" in satin, seems impossible, or at
least offensive, to some minds; perhaps to those who know least of
the reckless, callous light-heartedness of the most ragged
reprobates.

This has nothing to do, it seems to me, with the fact that a certain
degree of outlay on dress is criminal, on several grave accounts;
nor even with the incongruous spectacle of a becoming bonnet
arranged during the Litany by the tightly gloved fingers of a
worshipper, who would probably not be any the more devout for being
uncomfortably conscious of bad clothes. An old friend of my
childhood used to tell me that she always thought a good deal of her
dress before going to church, that she might quite forget it when
there.

Surely, dress has absolutely nothing to do with devotion. And the
impertinent patronage of worshippers in "fustian" is at least as
offensive as the older-fashioned vulgarity of pride in congregations
who "come in their own carriages." And I do protest against the
flippant inference that good clothes for the body must lower the
assumptions of the spirit, or make repentance insincere; which I no
more believe than that the worship of a clean Christian is less
acceptable than that of a brother who cannot afford or does not
value the use of soap.

I am perhaps anxious to defend this congregation, on which Jan
stumbled in the pale light of early morning in the city, from any
imputation on the sincerity of its worship, because it was mostly
very comfortably clad. The men were chiefly business men, with a
good deal of the obnoxious "broadcloth" about them, and with well-
brushed hats beneath their seats. One of the stoutest and most
comfortable-looking, with an intelligent face and a fair clean
complexion which spoke of good food, stood near the door. He wore a
new great-coat with a velvet collar, but his gray eyes (they had
seen middle age, and did not shine with any flash of youthful
enthusiasm) were fixed upon the window, and he sang very heartily,
and by heart, -

"Other Refuge have I none!
Hangs my helpless soul on Thee;
Leave, ah! leave me not alone,
Still support and comfort me."

The tears flowed down Jan's cheeks. It had been a favorite hymn of
his foster-mother, and he had often sung it to her. Master Swift
used to "give the note," and then sink himself into the bass part,
and these quaint duets had been common at the mill. How delightful
such simple pleasures seem to those who look back on them from the
dark places of the earth, full of misery and wickedness!

In spite of his tears, Jan was fain to join as the hymn went on, and
he sang like a bird, -

"All my trust on Thee is stayed,
All my help from Thee I bring;
Cover my defenceless head
With the shadow of Thy wing."

It was the hymn after the third collect, and when it was ended the
comfortable-looking gentleman motioned Jan into a seat, and he knelt
down.

When the service was over, the same gentleman took him by the arm,
and asked, "What's the matter with you, my boy?"

A rapid survey of his woes led Jan to reply, "I've no home, sir."

The congregation had dispersed quickly, for the men were going to
business.

This gentleman walked fast, and he hurried Jan along with him.

"Who are your parents?" he asked. The service had recalled Jan's
highest associations, and he was anxious to tell the strict truth.

"I don't rightly know, sir," said he.

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir," sobbed poor Jan.

They were stopping before a large house, and the gentleman said,
"Look here, my boy. If you had a good home, and good food, and
clothes, would you work? Would you try to be a good lad, and learn
an honest trade?"

"I'd be glad, sir," said Jan.

"Have you ever worked? What can you do?" asked the gentleman.

"I can mind pigs; but I do think 'twould be best for I to be in a
mill, and I've got a miller's thumb." Jan said this because the
idea had struck him that if he could only get home again he might
hire himself out at a mop to Master Lake. A traditional belief in
the force of the law of hiring made him think that this would
protect him against any claim of the Cheap Jack. Before the
gentleman could reply, the house-door was opened by a boy some years
older than Jan, who was despatched to fetch "the master." Jan felt
sure that it must be a school, though he was puzzled by the contents
of the room in which they waited. It was filled with pretty
specimens of joiner's and cabinet-maker's work, some quite and some
partly finished. There were also brushes of various kinds, so that,
if there had been a suitable window, Jan would have concluded that
it was a shop. In two or three moments the master's step sounded in
the passage.

Jan had pleasant associations with the word "master," and he looked
up with some vague fancy of seeing a second Master Swift. Not that
Master Swift, or any one else in the slow-going little village, ever
walked with this sharp, hasty tread, as if one hoped to overtake
time! With such a step the gentleman himself went away, when he had
said to Jan, "Be a good boy, my lad, and attend to your master, and
he'll be a good friend to you."

He was not in the least like Master Swift. He was young, and
youthfully dressed. A schoolmaster with neither spectacles nor a
black coat was a new idea to Jan; but he seemed to be kind, for,
with a sharp look at Jan's pinched face, he said, "You'll be glad of
some breakfast, my lad, I fancy; and breakfast's only just over.
Come along." And away he went at double quick time down the
passage, and Jan ran after him.

On their way to the kitchen, they crossed an open court where boys
were playing, and round which ran mottoes in large letters.

"You can read?" said the master, quickly, as he caught Jan's eyes
following the texts. "Have you ever been to school?"

"Yes, sir," said Jan.

"Can you write? What else have you learned?"

Jan pondered his stock of accomplishments. "I can write, sir, and
cipher. And I've learned geography and history, and Master Swift
gave I lessons in mechanics, and I be very fond of poetry and
painting, and" -

The master was painfully familiar with the inventive and boastful
powers of street boys. He pushed Jan before him into the kitchen,
saying smartly, but good-humoredly, "There, there! Don't make up
stories, my boy. You must learn to speak the truth, if you come
into the Home. We don't expect poets and painters," he added,
smiling. "If you can chop wood, and learn what you're taught,
you'll do for us."

A smile stole over the face of a shrewd-looking lad who was washing
dishes at the table. Jan saw that he was not believed, and his
tears fell into the mug of cocoa, and on to the bread which formed
his breakfast.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BUSINESS MAN AND THE PAINTER.--PICTURES AND POT BOILERS.--
CIMABUE AND GIOTTO.--THE SALMON-COLORED OMNIBUS.

The business men were half way to their business when the shadow of
the sooty church still fell upon one or two of the congregation who
dispersed more slowly; a few aged poor who lingered from infirmity
as well as leisure; and a man neither very old nor very poor, whose
strong limbs did not bear him away at a much quicker pace. His
enjoyment of the peculiar pleasures of an early walk was deliberate
as well as full, and bustle formed no necessary part of his trade.
He was a painter.

The business gentleman hurrying out of the Boys' Home stumbled
against the painter, whom he knew, but whom just now he would not
have been sorry to avoid. The very next salmon-colored omnibus that
passed the end of the street would only just enable him to be
punctual if he could catch it, and the painter, in his opinion, had
"no sense of the value of time." The painter, on the other hand,
held as strong a conviction that his friend's sense of the monetary
value of time was so exaggerated as to hinder his sense of many
higher things in this beautiful world. But they were fast friends
nevertheless, and with equal charity pitied each other respectively
for a slovenly and a slavish way of life.

"My dear friend!" cried the artist, seizing the other by the elbow,
"you are just coming from where I was thinking of going."

"By all means, my dear fellow," said Jan's friend, shaking hands to
release his elbow, "the master will be delighted, and--my time is
not my own, you know."

"I know well," said the artist, with a little humorous malice. "It
belongs to others. That is your benevolence. So" -

"Come, come!" laughed the other. "I'm not a man of leisure like
you. I must catch the next salmon-colored omnibus."

"I'll walk with you to it, and talk as we go. You can't propose to
run at your time of life, and with your position in the city! Now
tell me, my good friend, the boys in your Home are the offscouring
of the streets, aren't they?"

"They are mostly destitute lads, but they have never been convicted
of crime any more than yourself. It is the fundamental distinction
between our Home and other industrial schools. Our effort is to
save boys whom destitution has ALL BUT made criminal. It is not a
reformatory."

"I beg your pardon, I know. But I was speaking of their bodily
condition only. I want a model, and should be glad to get it
without the nuisance of sketching in the slums. Such a ragged,
pinched, eager, and yet stupid child as might sit homeless between
the black walls of Newgate and the churchyard of St. Sepulchre,--a
waif of the richest and most benevolent society in Christendom, for
whom the alternative of the churchyard would be the better."

"Not the only one, I trust," said the business gentleman, almost
passionately. "I trust in GOD, not the only alternative. If I have
a hope, it is that of greater and more effective efforts than
hitherto to rescue the children of London from crime."

In the warmth of this outburst, he had permitted a salmon-colored
omnibus to escape him, but, being much too good a man of business to
waste time in regrets, he placed himself at a convenient point for
catching the next, and went on speaking.

"I am glad to hear you have another picture in hand."

"Not a PICTURE--a POT BOILER," said the artist, testily. "Low art--
domestic sentiment--cheap pathos. My PICTURE no one would look at,
even if it were finished, and if I could bring myself to part with
it."

"Mind, you give me the first refusal."

"Of my PICTURE?"

"Yes, that is, I mean your street boy. It is just in my line. I
delight in your things. But don't make it too pathetic, or my wife
won't be able to bear it in the drawing room. Your things always
make her cry."

"That's the pot boiler," said the artist; "I really wish you'd look
at my picture, unfinished as it is. I should like you to have it.
Anybody'll take the pot boiler. I want a model for the picture too,
and, oddly enough, a boy; but one you can't provide me with."

"No? The subject you say is"--said the man of business, dreamily,
as he strove at the same time to make out if a distant omnibus were
yellow or salmon-colored.

"Cimabue finding the boy Giotto drawing on the sand. Ah! my friend,
can one realize that meeting? Can one picture the generous glow
with which the mature and courtly artist recognized unconscious
genius struggling under the form of a shepherd lad,--yearning out of
his great Italian eyes over that glowing landscape whose beauties
could not be written in the sand? Will the golden age of the arts
ever return? We are hardly moving towards it, I fear. For I have
found a model for my Cimabue,--an artist too, and a true one; but no
boy Giotto! Still I should like you to see it. I flatter myself
the coloring" -

"Salmon," said the man of business, briskly. "I thought it was
yellow. My dear fellow--HI!--take as many boys as you like--TO THE
CITY!"

The conductor of the salmon-colored omnibus touched his bell, and
the painter was left alone.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

A CHOICE OF VOCATIONS.--RECREATION HOUR.--THE BOW LEGGED BOY.--
DRAWING BY HEART.--GIOTTO.

Jan found favor with his new friends. The master's sharp eyes noted
that the prescribed ablutions seemed both pleasant and familiar to
the new boy, and the superintendent of the wood-chopping department
expressed his opinion that Jan's intelligence and dexterity were
wasted among the fagots, and that his vocation was to be a
brushmaker at least, if not a joiner.

Of such trades as were open to him in the Home Jan inclined to
cabinet-making. It must be amusing to dab little bunches of
bristles so deftly into little holes with hot pitch as to produce a
hearth-brush, but as a life-work it does not satisfy ambition. For
boot-making he felt no fancy, and the tailor's shop had a dash of
corduroy and closeness in the atmosphere not grateful to nostrils so
long refreshed by the breezes of the plains. But, when an elder boy
led him into the airy room of the cabinet-maker, Jan found a subject
of interest. The man was making a piece of furniture to order; the
boys had done the rough work, and he was finishing it. It was a
combination of shelves and cupboard, and was something like an old
oak cabinet which stood in Master Chuter's parlor, and which, in
Jan's opinion, was both handsomer and more convenient than this.
When the joiner, amused by the keen gaze of Jan's black eyes, asked
him good-naturedly "how he liked it," Jan expressed his opinion, to
illustrate which he involuntarily took up the fat pencil lying on
the bench, and made a sketch of Master Chuter's cabinet upon a bit
of wood.

News spreads with mysterious swiftness in all communities, large and
small. Before dinner-time, it was known throughout the Home that
the master joiner had applied for the new boy as a pupil, and that
he could draw with a black-lead pencil, and set his betters to
rights.

The master had passed through several phases of feeling over Jan
during that morning. His first impression had been dispelled by
Jan's orderly ways, and the absence of any vagrant restlessness
about him. The joiner's report awoke a hope that he would become a
star of the institution, but as his acquirements came to the light,
and he proved not merely to have a good voice, but to have been in a
choir, the master's generous hopes received a check, and as the day
passed on he became more and more convinced that it was a case to be
"restored to his friends."

When two o'clock came, and the boys were all out for "recreation,"
Jan had to endure some chaff on the subject of his accomplishments.
But the banter of London street boys was familiar to him, and he
took it in good part. When they found him good-tempered, he was
soon popular, and they asked his history with friendly curiosity.

"And vot sort of a mansion did you hang out in ven you wos at home?"
inquired a little lad, whose rosy cheeks and dancing eyes would have
qualified him to sit as a model for the hero of some little tale of
rustic life and simplicity, but who had graduated in the lowest lore
of the streets so much before he was properly able to walk that he
was bandy-legged in consequence. There must have been some blood in
him that was domestic and not vagrant in its currents, for he was as
a rule one of the steadiest and best-behaved boys in the
establishment. Only from time to time he burst out into street
slang of the strongest description, apparently as a relief to his
feelings. Happily for the cause it had at heart, the Boys' Home was
guided by large-minded counsels, and if the eyes of the master were
as the eyes of Argus, they could also wink on occasion. "Hout with
it!" said the bow-legged boy, straddling before Jan. "If it wos
Buckingham Palace as you resided in, make a clean breast of it, and
hease your mind."

"Thee knows more of palaces than the likes of me. Thee manners be
so fine," said Jan; and the repartee drew a roar of laughter, in
which the bandy-legged boy joined. "But I've lived in a windmill,"
Jan added, "and that be more than thee've done, I fancy."

Some of the boys had seen windmills, and some had not; and there was
a strong tendency among the boys who had to give exaggerated, not to
say totally fictitious, descriptions of those buildings to the boys
who had not. There was a quick, prevailing impression, however,
that Jan's word could be trusted, and he was appealed to. "Take it
off in a picter," said the bandy-legged boy. "We heered as you took
off a SWEET OF FURNITUR in the Master's face. Take off the
windmill, if you lived in it."

There was a bit of chalk in Jan's pocket, and the courtyard was
paved. He knelt down, and the boys gathered round him. They were
sharp enough to be sympathetic, and when he begged them to be quiet
they kept a breathless silence, which was broken only by the distant
roar of London outside, and by the Master's voice speaking in an
adjoining passage.

"I can hardly say, sir, that I FEAR, but I think you'll find most of
them look too hearty and comfortable for your purpose."

About Jan the silence was breathless. The bow-legged boy literally
laid his hand upon his mouth, and he had better have laid it over
his eyes, for they seemed in danger of falling out of their sockets.

Jan covered his for a moment, and then looked upwards. Back upon
his sensitive memory rolled the past, like a returning tide which
sweeps every thing before it. Much clearer than those roofs and
chimney-stacks the windmill stood against the sky, with arms
outstretched as if to recall its truant son. If he had needed it to
draw from, it was there, plain enough. But how should he need to
see it, on whose heart every line of it was written? He could have
laid his hand in the dark upon the bricks that were weather-stained
into fanciful landscapes upon its walls, and planted his feet on the
spot where the grass was most worn down about its base.

He drew with such power and rapidity that only some awe of the look
upon his face could have kept silence in the little crowd whom he
had forgotten. And when the last scrap of chalk had crumbled, and
he dragged his blackened finger over the foreground till it bled,
the voice which broke the silence was the voice of a stranger, who
stood with the master on the threshold of the court-yard.

Never perhaps was more conveyed in one word than in that which he
spoke, though its meaning was known to himself alone, -

"GIOTTO!"

CHAPTER XXXV.

"WITHOUT CHARACTER?"--THE WIDOW.--THE BOW-LEGGED BOY TAKES SERVICE.-
-STUDIOS AND PAINTERS.

"Manage it as you like," the artist had said to the master of the
Boys' Home. "Lend him, sell him, apprentice him, give him to me,--
whichever you prefer. Say I want a boot-black--a clothes-brusher--a
palette-setter--a bound slave--or an adopted son, as you please.
The boy I must have: in what capacity I get him is nothing to me."

"I am bound to remind you, sir," said the master, "that he was
picked up in the streets, and has had no training, and earned no
outfit from us. He comes to you without clothes, without character"
-

"Without character?" cried the artist. "Heavens and earth! Did you
ever study physiognomy? Do you know any thing of faces?"

"It is part of my duty to know something of them, sir," began the
master, who was slightly nettled.

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